Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Arts, Battlestar Galactica, Discovery Channel, HBO, Programs, Sci Fi Channel, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Television
SCI FI Channel’s mid-season finale of Battlestar Galactica (10p) last Friday delivered 1.2 million A18-49, 1.2 million A25-54 and 1.8 million total viewers. (Cynopsis 6/17)
Click the image below to watch the full finale online.
The hotter-than-hot “Army Wives” continues to set records for Lifetime. A week after the Season 2 premiere pulled in 4.5 million viewers, a high-water mark for the female-focused channel, the net last Sunday night attracted 1.98 million women in the 25-to-54 demographic. (Broadcasting & Cable 6/16)
To check out full episodes on their vertical site, click below.
Documentaries from HBO and Cinemax will now be available online for purchase through Amazon-owned CreateSpace’s DVD on Demand offering. The first movie in the new deal, “When I Knew,” which looks at when people first knew they were gay, will be available June 26, a day after its Cinemax premiere. (World Screen News 6/16)
Investors say General Electric could help its languishing shares — now near 4 1/2-year lows — by selling off businesses in its portfolio. But the company is resisting calls that it should sell its 80% stake in NBC Universal. GE says it is committed to a diversified business model. (Iwantmedia 6/17, http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN1647648820080616 6/16)
News Corp. shares are getting a boost from their 52-week lows following a positive report by Lehman Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente. The media giant is a good buy at the current price, DiClemente says, noting that MySpace continues to show strong revenue growth. (Iwantmedia 6/17, http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080613/news_corp_mover.html 6/13)
Multiplatform international sports broadcaster WCSN formed a joint venture with NBC Sports hoping to build a larger audience around sports largely overlooked by existing sports brands including Gymnastics, Track and Field, Swimming and Biking. The Universal Sports brand will replace WCSN’s linear digital channel later this summer – currently in about 2 million digital multicasts homes – and launch as the ad-supported web portal Universal Sports.com in July. (Cynopsis 6/17, Reuters/The Hollywood Reporter 6/17, The Washington Post/paidContent.org 6/16)
As part of its deal to separate from Time Warner, Time Warner Cable is looking to sell $5 billion in bonds to pay a cash dividend to shareholders of the parent company, according to one report. The spinoff is expected to give the country’s second-largest cable provider far more flexibility and freedom in charting its own future. (BusinessWeek/Standard & Poor’s Equity Research 6/17, Bloomberg 6/16, Reuters 6/16)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Firefox 3, Guinness World Records, Microsoft, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, MSN, U.S. Open, Windows Media Center
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Today’s the big day for the official, no-longer-beta release of the Firefox 3 browser. There is even a campaign to make today, June 17, Download Day and “set a Guinness World record for most downloads in 24 hours.” They are shooting for 5 million. Although, I’m not sure that there was a previous Guinness record to break, so any number might qualify. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/17/its-firefox-3-world-record-download-day-but-im-still-waiting 6/17)
Online video ad network YuMe struck a deal with Microsoft to sell MSN‘s unsold video ad inventory across its network of thematic channels. YuMe’s software includes a contextual targeting system that helps match ads with videos that best fit targeted demographics. The deal expands upon an agreement Microsoft and YuMe has placing ads through Microsoft’s Windows Media Center platform. (Cynopsis 6/17
NBCSports.com was one of three online outlets golf fans turned to yesterday to watch the Tiger/Rocco showdown while at work, as rights holders seemingly loosened their ties to let the largest audience possible tune in. ESPN 360.com, available to select ISP customers, and The USGA’s IBM-powered U.S. Open site also streamed the full round. Midway through the round NBCSports.com began experiencing video delays and other problems then eventually linked to the USGA’s live stream. (Cynopsis 6/17)
Tiger Woods
The next big event ESPN is gearing up for in terms of digital coverage is Wimbledon. A new 6-year agreement with the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club enables ESPN to broadcast all day matches on ESPN360.com with 5 streams of coverage beginning June 23. Wimbledon coverage can also be found on ESPN.com and, for the first time, on ESPN Interactive Television, featuring a 6-screen mosaic of matches. (Cynopsis 6/17)
ESPN and Fox are preparing to make aggressive bids for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics, and if the cable sports network prevails, it could dramatically change the way the Games are covered, according to Horizon Media’s Brad Adgate. “ESPN is interesting because [it's] cable,” he said. “And some of the best brands launched in the past 25 years … have been on cable.” (New York Post 6/26)
An arbitrator is ordering Media Breakaway and CEO Scott Richter to pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in legal fees. News Corp.’s online social network had accused Media Breakaway of launching phishing attacks and sending unsolicited messages to its users. (Iwantmedia 6/17, http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9969899-7.html 6/16)
(Below) If you haven’t noticed that the MSO’s/telcos of the world such as Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable are beginning to charge a fee for usage over a capped amount, perhaps these stats will help you take notice. Notice that 90% of traffic on the internet in 2012 will be expected to be streaming video. There’s no breakdown for HD vs. SD but keep in mind that HD video is much larger in terms of data size. With all of us watching that much video, don’t feel so comfortable that you won’t become what is now coined a “super user.” This is a very smart move from the broadband service providers’ end. They are trying to convince you that you will never be one of those super users being charged additional fees. Yet, at some point, based on these stats, most of us will become that heavy user paying additional fees for, what at least now, amounts to sub-par broadband fees.
Video and web 2.0 social networking applications will push global IP traffic up to 44 exabytes/month by 2012, compared to less than 7 exabytes/month generated in 2007, according to the new Cisco Visual Networking Index forecast. (That’s an annual growth rate of 46%!) Internet video jumped from 12% of the global consumer internet traffic in 2006 to 22% in 2007. Video on demand, IPTV, P2P video, and streaming video are forecast to account for nearly 90% of all consumer IP traffic in 2012. Mobile data traffic will also roughly double each year from 2008 to 2012. Click here for a white paper on the study. (Cynopsis 6/17)
Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Apple, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, News and Media, Search Engines, Searching, Web search engine
Google won 61% of the mobile search market during the first quarter of 2008, according to Nielsen Mobile. Yahoo came in at a very distant second at 18%. Google is set as a factory default search engine on all Apple iPhones. (Iwantmedia 6/17, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080616-google-easily-extending-dominance-to-mobile-search-market.html 6/16)
Filed under: GAMING | Tags: Crytek, GAMING, Google Internet, Personal computer game, Playstation 3, PlayStation Portable, PSP, Sony
PC companies say gaming is alive and well on that platform despite sales figures that show a decline in PC gaming software last year. They argue that online gaming presents a strong challenge to consoles and point to research from DFC Intelligence that shows the sector’s revenue soared from $9.3 billion in 2006 to $11.3 billion in 2007. (The Boston Globe 6/16)
While much of the computer-gaming industry seems to be angling toward the larger casual-gaming consumer base, Nintendo says it hasn’t forgotten its traditional core-gamer roots. To that end, the company said that a number of its core fans should be excited about its upcoming introductions scheduled around next month’s gaming-industry event. “[Third-party publishes] realize that Wii is the current platform of choice in this generation, and their bottom lines depend on appealing to the largest base,” Nintendo of America’s Marc Franklin said. (GameDaily BIZ 6/17)
Sony‘s PlayStation Portable upgrade to v4.00 will include Google Internet search functionality that users can access via a Wi-Fi network, Sony said Monday on its PSP blog as the company continues to add Web applications to its handheld device. Sony will add the feature this week to the PSP’s XMB (XrossMediaBar). (CNET 6/17, GameDaily BIZ 6/16)
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY | Tags: Adobe, Apple, AT&T, Cablevision, Flash, iPhone, Klausner Technologies, Linksys iPhone
Adobe already has a version of Flash for the iPhone running on emulation software, and would, fingers crossed, be able to bring that over to the phone itself if Apple allowed it. That’s what Adobe said yesterday at its Q2 conference call.
Apple, AT&T and eBay have settled with Klausner Technologies over a patent lawsuit filed against the companies related to the iPhone’s visual voice mail system. The parties have agreed to license the technology from Klausner, which is also reportedly in talks with Comcast and Cablevision Systems on similar litigation. (CNET 6/16, The Washington Post/Reuters 6/16)
JVC rolled out three new consumer-grade Everio HD camcorders, featuring 1080p, 60 frames/second signal output and improved shot-response time. The GZ-HD40 and GZ-HD30 are the first dual-format AVCHD/mpeg2 recorders, offering a plug-in allowing users to edit using Apple’s iMovie HD 6 or Final Cut Pro 5 or 6 for the Mac. (Cynopsis 6/17)
One of these cameras can record up to 50 hours in HD? In essence, this camera is the anti-Flip Video.
Disney is opening its new Innoventions Dream Home at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. The “house of the future” showcases new technologies like partner Microsoft’s “Surface” table computer. Each partner company paid Disney at least $1 million to participate in the home for five years.
(Iwantmedia 6/17, http://www.ajc.com/business/content/living/stories/2008/06/16/disneyland_home_future.html 6/16)
One feature of the Innoventions Dream Home is the ‘magic mirror’ in daughter Chelsea’s room that lets her ‘virtually’ try on different clothes and accessories without ever lifting a finger.
Amino Communications has introduced what it is calling the world’s smallest HD-only, MPEG-4 set-top box, a device that’s just 4.48 inches wide and 1.37 inches tall. The AmiNET130M has one HDMI connector, no DVR features and, thanks to its simplicity, is about 20% less expensive than Amino’s current HD set-top, the AmiNET130 HD. (Multichannel News 6/17)
Filed under: MISC
Sales of Blu-ray DVD players will reach about 10 million units by the end of this year, according to research firm Futuresource Consulting. The study said that 2008 would be the third year of Blu-ray availability and that consumer uptake of the new technology was on track to far outpace that of DVD players, which sold about 1.5 million units in that device’s first three years. (Pocket-lint.co.uk 6/16)
